Human Universals
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to impose meaning on the world, 99, 182
Kroeber on, 57
to overestimate objectivity of thought, 134, 181
Terminological misunderstandings, 101–102
Territoriality (see Groups)
Textbooks, 11–12, 16, 21, 29, 33, 61–62, 156
Theft, 161
Thinking, 157, 180
tendency to overestimate objectivity of, 134, 181
Thought (see Thinking)
Tiger, Lionel, 81, 140
Time, 10, 27–31, 82, 86, 92–94, 133, 157, 170, 174, 178, 197
rhythmicity of, 133
spatial metaphors of, 28, 29
units of, 133
Toilet training, 137
Tolerance, 65, 71, 73
Tooby, John, 83, 85, 86, 103n, 106, 147n, 148
Tool making (see Tools)
Tools, 40, 59, 70, 135–136, 165, 167, 169, 178
and aesthetics, 116
dependence on, 75, 135, 183
permanent, 135
relation to handedness of, 94
stylization of, 135–136
universal types of, 135
Trade, 69, 138, 165
Traits and complexes, 40, 43, 44, 130
Translation, 12, 132, 133
Transport, 58, 165
Treatment:
of the dead, 59, 69, 70, 139, 176
of the sick, 59, 69, 139, 176, 196
Trial-and-error problem solving, 165
Triangular awareness, 111, 138, 166
Trivers, R. L., 82, 107, 108
True/false, 131, 174
Turn taking, 131, 183, 191
Turner, Frederick, 116, 150, 153
Turner, Victor W., 142, 143, 155
Two (numeral), 133
Tying, 135
(See also Interlacing; String)
Tylor, Edward B., 54–56
on incest taboo, 72
on racial explanations, 54
Ultimate explanations, 104, 129
“Universal Categories of Culture,” 72–73
Universal conditions as basis of human universals, 70
Universal framework (or model), 59, 66–67, 71, 76, 94, 158, 165, 175, 178, 189, 198
defined, 47–48
Universal functions of society/culture, 76, 157
Universal grammar, 164
Universal hypotheses, 175
Universal model (see Universal framework)
Universal needs (see Needs)
“Universal Pattern, The,” 48, 58–59, 71
Universal People, the (UP), 130–141
Universal pool, 46, 70, 181
Universal semantic types, 167
Universal validity (knowledge), 92
Universalist approach, 82
Universality:
as a clue to adaptation, 105
demonstration of, 51–53
Universals:
absolute, 43n, 44, 140 164
of accident, 49–50
anatomical and physiological traits rarely included among, 39, 41
anomalousness of, 143
anthropological ambivalence toward, 54, 58, 64, 73, 75, 81, 82, 145
biological, 49
(See also Biological universals; Biology/psychology as basis or explanation of universals)
Boas on, 55–56, 58
causation in explanation of, 89, 117
classification of, 182
of classification, 48, 59, 64, 70, 71, 73
conceptualization of, 39–42, 141
conditional (implicational), 45–46, 50, 80, 89–90, 103, 105, 141, 142
of content, 48, 59, 70, 73
of conversation structure, 185
cultural, 39–40, 63, 142
deep, 44, 141
(See also Deep processes)
as deep syntax and lexicon of culture, 153
definitions of, 5, 42–50, 141
emic/etic, 48–49
of essence, 49–50
evolutionary, 188
exceptions to, 36, 127
experiential, 47, 180, 192
explanation of, 82–92, 116–117
extrinsic, 49–50
“fake,” 74, 114
formal, 43, 49, 50, 164
former, 50
functions of language, 192
of grammar, 131–132, 164, 173
heterogeneity of, 5–6, 142
hierarchy of, 141
in history of social sciences, 143
in human affairs, importance of, 153
on human nature and (see Bidney, David)
and humanities, 149, 153–154, 156
implicational (conditional), 45–46, 50, 78, 80, 89–90, 103, 105, 142, 149–151, 175
implications of, 149
implicit definition of, 42
improbability of, if culture autonomous, 58, 63, 143
interest in, 75, 81, 88
intrinsic, 49–50
kinds of, 43–50
Kroeber dismisses, 64
lexical, 162, 173, 200
in language, role of, 150–151
linguistic (see Language; Linguistic universals; Linguistics)
of literary art, 153, 176
manifest, 47
of music, 174, 200
(See also Music)
near, 43, 44, 47, 56, 89–90, 109, 141, 176, 177, 180, 182
examples of, 44
incest taboo as, 118, 128
Shepher on, 127
negative, 50, 164, 186, 189
never proved, 53
new, 50
nonconditional, 45, 164
nonimplicational, 45, 164
partial explanations of, 113–117
and particulars, 149
in personality terms, 199
phonemic, 173
process, 43, 47, 81, 141, 156, 170, 182
product, 182
proving, 38, 53
psychological, 175
psychological bases for, 70
reflect human nature, 146, 148
semantic, 11, 12, 79–80, 131–133
skepticism toward, 1, 5, 6, 26, 54, 58, 64, 73, 75, 81, 82
social, 39–40, 42, 50, 66, 142
statistical, 43n, 44–45, 93, 97, 149–150, 187
incest taboo as, 128
substantive, 42–43, 49, 81, 141, 164, 170
surface, 43, 47, 141
tracing consequences of, 150–151, 153–154
types of, 182
unrestricted, 45, 78, 127, 142, 150, 164
World War II and study of, 69, 86, 87
World War III, threat of, and study of, 73
(See also Grammar, universals of)
Unknown, proneness to explain, 97
Unrestricted universals (see Universals)
UP (see Universal People, the)
Usage of terms, misunderstanding between biological and social scientists, 101–102
Van den Berghe, Pierre, 44, 107
Variation not necessarily sociocultural, 103n
Variousness as essence of human nature, 74
Veblen, Thorstein, 68
Verb(s), 132, 167
Vestibular induction of trance, 114, 116
Violence, 59, 110
proscription of, 138, 182
Visiting, 70, 139
Vocalics/nonvocalics, 131
Warden, Carl J., 66
Watson, John B., 60–61
Weaning, 70, 136
Weapons, 59, 135, 169
Weather control, 70, 139
Weiner, Annette B., 34n, 38
Westermarck, Edward, 119–121
Westermarck effect or hypothesis, 121–122, 128–129
age limits of, 122–123, 128
lessons drawn from test of, 128
What Is Art For, 116
White, black, and red, 12, 14, 161
White, Leslie, 68, 72
Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 10, 27–31, 144, 155
Williams, Elgin, 65, 69
Williams, George C., 82, 100, 103, 109n, 14
8
Wilson, E. O., viii, 82
Wilson, Margo, 86, 105, 107, 109, 155
Wissler, Clark, 47, 48, 58–59, 71
Witkowski, Stanley R., 14
Wolf, Arthur P., 121–122, 124
Words, 132
shorter if used frequently, 133
transparent and opaque, 197
Worldview, 40, 47, 49, 69, 99, 139, 167, 170, 171, 176, 178, 189, 193, 194
structured by features of mind, 139
unification of senses in constructing, 139
Writing, 58
Yengoyan, Aram, 47
Zipf, George K., 98
Appendix
Human Universals: Reflections On Its Whence and Whither
This essay originally appeared on the website for the Literary Universals Project, June 25, 2017.
Human universals have been a part of anthropological thought from the field’s academic beginning, yet to my knowledge no book devoted to the topic had been published for many decades before mine of 1991, Human Universals. I here recount how that book came about, along with notes on what followed. (For brevity I will refer to the book as HU; “human universals” will be simply “universals”.)
Much of the attention universals received in anthropology in the twentieth century, notably in the U.S., consisted of denial or minimization of their existence and significance (notably, see Geertz 1965). Some of anthropology’s best-known and influential research publications specifically purported to refute the existence of one or another alleged universal. In the early 1980s, however, some of those refutations in turn were refuted on the basis of competent field research: Deborah Gewertz (1981) refuted Margaret Mead’s (1935) claim of female dominance among the Tchambuli (of New Guinea). Ekkehart Malotki (1983) refuted the claim by Benjamin Lee Whorf (published posthumously in Carroll [1956]) that the Hopi lacked a sense of time. Derek Freeman (1983) refuted Mead’s claim (1928) that adolescent stress was absent among Samoans.
Those refutations of refutations, and other research publications with similar implications, called for a rethinking of anthropological ideas about universals, their scope, causes, and consequences. I decided to undertake that task, spurred in part by losing a bet that I, in a typical relativist anthropologist mode, placed against my colleague Donald Symons’ (1979) claims for universal sex differences in human sexual behavior, as I noted in the preface of HU. Typing “human universals” (without the quotation marks) into the Google Books Ngram Viewer will show a steepened rise in the occurrence of the term in the 1980s.
So much was then beginning to be published on universals that before long I changed my mind about the need for the book I had envisaged. Only when it occurred to me that packaging a list of the many apparent universals in the form of an imaginary ethnography of the “Universal People” (HU’s chapter 6) would be particularly catching, did I change my mind again.
The most effective part of HU was probably that chapter. While the list included many features that are strictly cultural (such as cooking with fire) a large number were strongly suggestive of a rich human nature, in opposition to the predominant view in anthropology and other social sciences that culture (or society) is the supreme determinant of human behavior, and that culture’s (or society’s) features cannot be “reduced” to biology. By happy coincidence, in the same year that HU appeared the historian Carl Degler’s In Search of Human Nature (1991) more thoroughly examined the history of what led to that predominant view. A year later John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (1992) critiqued that view as the “Standard Social Science Model”, which the then emerging field of Evolutionary Psychology aimed to supplant. Later, Steven Pinker’s best- selling The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) appended a (very slightly modified) list of human universals that I supplied, which then introduced them to a much wider reading audience (supplemented by variants of the list posted on the internet). Later yet, it was Steven Pinker’s suggestion that Pangea Day—an event held simultaneously on all continents except Antarctica in 2008—take universals as a theme for its TED-related event promoting film as a means to bring the peoples of the world together (find Pangea Day on Wikipedia).
The totality of academic interest in human universals has almost certainly been greater outside of anthropology than in it, where specifically cultural anthropologists are most numerous and less persuaded by the thinking entailed by the existence and importance of universals. Nonetheless, particular anthropologists have been highly influential in the development of studies centrally concerned with identifying and illuminating those universals that comprise human nature. “Evolutionary Psychology” has come to label much of that endeavor. As the label indicates, many psychologists collaborate in it. Psychology may well be the discipline most influenced by the ferment of the 1980s that challenged the Standard Social Science Model.
Primatologists, often themselves in anthropology departments, have contributed to the study of universals in distinctive ways, given that our relatives in the animal world allow comparisons that throw a distinctive light on the human psyche and behavior. One of the particularly revealing works of this kind is Bernard Chapais’ Primate Kinship: How Pair-Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society (2008). It shows that features of human society long considered to be cultural, with origins irretrievably lost in the mists of time, were actually parts of our primate heritage. Chapais’ development and application of a logico-deductive theory in relation to universals, employed to trace the evolution of human society from its primate ancestors, is a promising development in method and theory (see, e. g., Chapais 2014 and in press).
Primatologists have taken the idea of universals in a yet different direction, by identifying 100-plus “chimpanzee universals:” behaviors common to all the distinct chimpanzee populations that have been carefully studied. Those observed behaviors common to one or more chimpanzee populations but not to all are then candidate cultural behaviors. William McGrew’s The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology (2004) pursues this line of thought.
Outside of the social sciences, one of the fields in which thinking about universals has been most stimulated is literary analysis. This will of course be addressed far more competently by others in this forum. But a particularly pleasant surprise to me was the direct influence on novelists, notably Ian McEwan in his essay “Literature, Science, and Human Nature” (2005). Amusingly, in her novel The Family Tree Carole Cadwalladr (2005) used reference to a short list of human universals to set up a later wry comment on male proclivities.
Universals in the graphic and plastic arts have, very justifiably, not been ignored. Ellen Dissanayake’s What is Art For? (1988) and Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (1992), for example, were thoroughly anchored in considerations of human universals, human nature, and the evolution-minded critiques of the arch relativism of anthropology at that time.
Given that the histories and historically relevant textual materials accumulated over time surely constitute the largest body of “data” on human thought and behavior (until the digital age!), it is no surprise that social scientists regularly call on those materials in attempts to formulate, bolster, or refute claims of universality. But my impression is that few who are professional historians have made it a major focus of their work (recall however the mention of Carl Degler above). The historian-sociologist Keith Hopkins (1980) entered the debate over the Westermarck effect (incest avoidance as an adaptation) but to my knowledge did not further address the study of universals or human nature. One who does, and hopes to encourage it among other historians, is Gregory Hanlon in his paper Historians and the Evolutionary Approach to Human Behavior.
Two criticisms of HU that I considered valid were presented to me personally. One referred to the credence I gave to the universality of the Oedipus Complex. The critique was toward the underlying tripartite model of the mind that the Complex entails. (for a different and comprehensive critique see Sugiyama 2001). The other criticism was that I should get on wi
th a second edition of HU. If I were to do that I would rethink counting the Oedipus Complex as universal. I do not have a second edition on my agenda, but am happy to report there are now other book-length treatments of universals. Moreover, I have had the opportunity to repackage my arguments or expand on particular points in various short essays.
Turning to those essays first, encyclopedia entries allowed brief (Brown 1996) and even briefer (1999b) summaries of the argument and evidence presented in HU. My “Human Nature and History” (1999a) argued for the inevitable and pervasive links between human nature and history and the links between universals and human nature. Brown (2000) goes well beyond HU via a wider discussion of the implications of universals, particularly in understanding what it is to be human. Brown (2004) addresses a wider audience, summarizing key parts of HU but focusing particularly on the linkages between universals and human nature and then on human nature’s causal role in the production of human culture. Brown (2013) addresses the theoretical relevance of universals in anthropology, summarizing what suppressed the study of them in much of the twentieth century, and the variety of recent conditions—particularly in the sciences—that have now antiquated key features of that century’s sociocultural theory.
What those essays have not addressed, and would definitely be in any re-write of HU, would be updates to its roster of universals. The universals in color nomenclature that HU summarized, for example, have undergone considerable debate and revision. Claims, arguments, and data to support universals not listed in HU have been numerous. Psychologists, perhaps even more than anthropologists, have been particularly active in both finding universals and offering explanations for them—proximate and ultimate. The former explanations refer primarily to such psycho-physical conditions or entities as the mind, hormones, and sex/age differences. The latter refers to why the particular universals evolved as features of human nature, a key part of the subject matter of Evolutionary Psychology (see e. g. Buss 2005).
While I have not kept an expanding list of newly claimed or demonstrated universals, they surely are numerous. Many, coming out of Evolutionary Psychology or related research orientations, are invariant features of human nature that in themselves are neither readily observable nor commonly named entities. Analogous to the edge-detecting or movement-detecting neurological features of vision, they are revealed through one or another form of research experimentation. Each discharging its specific function, such features operate in combination with other features of human nature—and inputs from the senses—to produce behavioral outputs of potentially infinite gradation (Pietraszewski [2016] gives a concise description).